


A Race You'll Never Win

by Maximumrider



Category: overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 16:33:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7395115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maximumrider/pseuds/Maximumrider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is just a thing for an Overwatch OC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Race You'll Never Win

"Ow... Ow... Ow..."  
In any other situation, the scene would be comical to Ori. A boy in a ratty sweatshirt with a hood that would look good at a renaissance fair stumbling and tripping over every little crevice in the forest floor while occasionally trying to move his own legs a bit faster with his arms.

Except this isn't any other situation.  
He has Talon soldiers chasing him so they could literally remove his spine and kill him.  
And his leg exoskeletons were malfunctioning.  
So yeah, Ori wasn't exactly laughing at the moment. 

He cradled his injured arm as the exoskeletons jerked his entire body once again, as if wanting to prove themselves on how much they were failing him. 

He should have studied the maps better. He should have known the room he was jumping into was an interrogation room, filled to the brim with guards.  
Except he didn't.  
Which led to hundreds of guards attacking him at once while he desperately tried to escape while spitting a witty comment or two in there.  
He had almost made it, but then the one with the the missile launcher managed to get him when he thought he had lost them. 

The explosion had reminded him of the time when-  
When-  
He didn't like to think about it. 

All he knew was that the exos were damaged and his arm was definitely going to need medical attention soon.  
Ori reached into his pack strapped onto his back and pulled out the first thing he felt.  
Eh, duct tape should do.  
He ripped off a long piece with his teeth and wrapped it clumsily around his arm. He'd deal with it later. 

Ori could hear the loud footsteps of the Talon around him, sometimes somewhere in front of him, sometimes behind him, and sometimes passing close enough beside him to brush the leaves of the bush he had curled up underneath, the cottony fabric of his scarf stuffed into his mouth to quiet his breathing. 

It should have only taken 20 minutes to make it to the 'safe house' he had set up, but due to having to take few detours and hiding in bushes, he'd been doing this for hours, and he wasn't sure how long he'd be able to last. The soldiers were just everywhere. 

His vision was starting to grow black around the edges and it was getting harder to quiet his breathing whenever he heard particularly close footsteps. 

He looked up, only to see dense, claustrophobic foliage covering his view of the sky. Occasionally he could see a star peak out, and Ori liked to imagine it was the universe's way of saying that he wasn't completely alone. 

That everything he was doing wasn't for nothing. 

He was doing it for the person in the interrogation room of lab 241 with needles sticking out of them at every angle.  
With the glassy eyes that had told Ori that the man was too far gone.  
He was doing it for the girl strapped to the operating table of lab 413 with the intent to turn her into Talon's personal weapon. 

He was doing it for himself, so he could finally live in peace, and not have to look over his shoulder everyday. 

Someday, that could happen.  
"There he is!"  
But not today. 

Ori was off like a rabbit as the Talon solider continued to shout orders. If his hearing wasn't so good, he wouldn't have known that they were planning to cut him off.  
He quickly veered left, his legs almost collapsing under the stress the exoskeletons definitely did not need at the moment.  
A bullet whizzed past his ear, and the thought that if they had grown only a few centimeters more it would have been blown off doesn't do much to comfort him.  
His breathing is to loud and ragged.  
His tracks are too obvious from the clumsiness of his legs.  
He can hear them gaining on him.  
He isn't sure if his N.E. Generator will be able to take the stress of another fight, but it's going to have to at this rate. 

He lets out a cry as his too slow feet snag on a root, sending him flying into a clearing.  
He rolls a few times before he stops completely, clutching his already wounded arm.  
He considers just staying there curled up, never having to deal with the world again. He could lay there forever with the moon shining down on him in its full glory as he faded away.  
But he knows even if he did stay, he wouldn't be able to fade away.  
He'd be taken by Talon, and used to further their research. 

Used.  
Never again.

Tears burn his eyes as he forces himself back on his feet, gasping heavily as he tries to catch the breath that got knocked out of him. The N.E. Generator on his back prickles painfully, as if voicing it's disappointment with his decision to get back up. 

"Stay right where you are!"  
About 6 pairs of glowing red eyes soon fully surrounded the clearing, moving in closer and soon coming into the moonlight, red dots from the guns peppering Ori's body. 

"Don't move! Put your hands up where I can see them!" Shouted one, presumably the captain of the little group currently surrounding him. Ori could tell since her armor seemed a bit thicker than the rest, and she had a solid grey stripe on her sleeve that symbolized her 'leadership'.  
He they all seemed to have a different color stripe on their sleeve, indicating their rank.  
What a joke. 

Talon wouldn't know leadership if it docked right in front of their base. 

Ori quickly scanned the situation, his breathing still heavy, ears twisting every which way in an attempt to get the best reading from everything around him.  
"I said hands up!"  
"Impatient, aren't we?" Ori manages to say, although it doesn't come out as confident as he'd like, since he's still wheezing and currently trying not to pass out, but the adrenaline seems to be helping with that.  
"Oh that's it." He hears the captain mumble, and start to approach him, annoyance clear at being mocked in front of her squad.  
He can feel the staticky rush of negative energy flow through him, nerves prickling as the captain continues to walk closer.  
He lets out a quick breath, and forces the fabric of space and time to fold to his will. 

"Brace for impact!" He shouts suddenly, a crazed grin flashing across his features. 

A portal opens directly under his feet and suddenly he's falling through the second one he's made.  
The soldiers are still shooting at the place he had been a second ago when he lands heavily on the one with the purple stripe, since they were the tallest and most likely to be unbalanced by an aerial attack. He kicks purple stripe while he's down, the heavy metal surrounding his foot providing a good item to knock them out with, then launched himself to the side as a new onslaught of bullets decimate the tree behind him. 

He proceeds with the same tactic against one with a yellow stripe, but the rest of the squad seem more ready for him this time as they immediately start firing bullets when he lands. 

Ori doesn't have time to roll out of the way this time, so he throws up portal 1 in front of him, and can't help the small wheezy laugh that escapes him as every single bullet of their own streak out of portal 2 aimed at green stripe and ricochet off their helmet, leaving quite a few dents. 

They were gonna wake up with a headache in the morning. 

Green stripe proceeds to fall to the ground and he quickly analyzes his situation.  
Purple, yellow and green stripe down. All that's left is blue stripe, red stripe, and the Captain. They seem more aware of his tricks and Ori considers running, but he knows he won't be able to get very far, but he also knows he won't be able to fight much longer.  
His N.E. Generator has started to grow warm, and he doesn't want to know what the feeling of his insides melting feels like. 

He stares at his opponents, fingers clenching and unclenching as he tries to come up with a plan.  
Well, might as well use one of his natural gifts. 

His big mouth. 

"What's the deal? Why do you guys even work for Talon?" He says, eyes constantly glancing at the fingers poised ready at the triggers of each individual.  
The captain stares at him for a long moment without answer, and Ori isn't sure if she is caught off guard by the question, of just debating whether or not to kill him right there.  
Then, she does something that throws him off guard. 

She starts laughing.  
"Oh you poor ignorant child. You don't know the half of it." She says, a koi grin on her face that look horrendously creepy with the red lights of the mask. 

"Then please, enlighten me." He says, casting a panicked glance at purple strip when he seems to start to be coming to. 

"Talon is going to be the leaders of the new world, they're going to be-" 

That's when Ori decides he's heard enough, even though it wasn't very much. 

He casually creates a portal directly underneath him again, but instead of putting the second portal above blue stipe, he puts it behind him and uses the momentum from falling to slam into blue stripe from behind and knocking him on his front.

The captain is shouting commands and makes for a punch towards his middle, which Ori manages to block with his uninjured arm, but he can't get his other arm up to block the punch that hits his right eye squarely.  
Ori reels back, then slid away from the punch coming from Red and grabbed their arm. He uses his leg to push Red left into the incoming attack from Blue, sending them both tumbling over each other. 

He isn't so ready when the Captain comes to tackle him, and in his panic he makes a portal underneath him. He's falling through the air, much higher than before but the Captain is still hanging onto him like a leech. He wrestles with her as they fall through the air and is forced to make another portal to keep them from slamming into the ground. He makes one facing sideways, which sends them rolling across the clearing. 

The two of them ram into Red and Blue still in the process of getting up from the initial attack, which sends them all falling again. He elbows Red in the temple whose directly underneath him, which seems to do the trick. Blue struggles underneath Red whose underneath Ori whose underneath the still very much conscious captain. 

It's like one big dogpile.  
A very violent dogpile. 

Ori creates one more portal underneath all four of them, then a second one in the air and proceeds to knock Blue out by the combined weight of all three of them landing heavily on them.

Ori knows from the burning sensation in his back that he won't be able to do any tricks any more.

Ori feels hot hands closing around his neck and he suddenly can't breathe. His vision is sill blurry from the original punch but he can see the captains teeth baring as her grip tightens.  
"Was it worth it? Running all these months. The paranoia, the knowledge in the back of your mind that we would always find you. That you couldn't run forever?"  
She whispers, her victorious grin only growing wider as he hands tightened. 

The black spots in his vision start to close in and he attempts to punch her gut, but all his attacks are feint, weak from the the lack of oxygen. 

He needs a plan B.  
He needs a plan B. 

He desperately starts messing with the panels in one of his exoskeleton legs and the captain must think he's just flailing around because her grin turns from victorious to slightly amused. 

"The Talon always catches its prey." She says, deciding it was officially time to crush his windpipe. 

Although she never gets the chance. Ori rips out the energy pack that powered his exoskeleton legs and jammed the outlet into her stomach.  
The arcs of electricity jumping across her body is accompanied by her screeching, and Ori uses his glove to shove her off to avoid being shocked as well.

She goes silent. 

And Ori stares at the moon above him as the unexpected silence slowly blankets the area. 

The sounds of the Captains heart suddenly starting back up again has him shoving the battery pack back into the panel in his legs and pushing himself up. 

He's back on his feet once again, retightening the straps of his bag as the buzzing completely swarming his nerves eases off.  
He wipes the blood from his mouth and continues his journey. 

Some say running away is a race you'll never win.  
The way Ori sees it, it's a race you'll live to tell the tale about.


End file.
